The Baobab and the Mango Tree: Lessons about Development - African and Asian Contrasts

Thompson, Nicholas; Thompson, Scott

ISBN 10: 1856498107 / ISBN 13: 9781856498104

Published by Zed Books, 2000

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # ria9781856498104_new

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Baobab and the Mango Tree: Lessons about Development - African and Asian Contrasts
• Publisher: Zed Books
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1856498107
• ISBN 13: 9781856498104
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This is a book dealing with the big questions about development:

· What is development?
· Can Third World countries ever hope to 'catch up'?
· Can a development path be found that avoids indefinite impoverishment on the one hand, and environmental destruction on the other?
· What is the relationship, if any, between economic growth and political development?
· Can a country that has failed hitherto create for itself a second chance?

In their wide-ranging and insightful exploration, the authors take as their main examples two contrasting countries: Ghana, the first African colony to win independence, but which plunged into a downward spiral of economic decay; and Thailand, which was poorer than West Africa in the 1950s, but which went on to achieve decades of extraordinarily rapid economic growth, albeit at considerable environmental and human cost.

Intensely readable, this thought-provoking and courageous book brings the big questions about development to a wide audience of college students and interested readers.

About the Author

Professor Scott Thompson is Director of Southeast Asia Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. A former Rhodes Scholar, he has a doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University. He is the author/editor of eleven books including Ghana’s Foreign Policy: 1957-66 (Princeton University Press); The Philippines in Crisis (St Martin’s Press); and Lessons of Vietnam (Praeger). His articles have appeared in all major US newspapers and in Foreign Policy, International Security, and other journals. During his long academic career, he has held four presidential appointments in Washington DC -- at the Pentagon, the United States Institute of Peace, and the United States Information Agency. He has also been a White House Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.

Nicholas Scott is Editor of the Washington Monthly. A graduate from Stanford, Phi Beta Kappa with Honors and a triple major in Economics, Political Science and Environmental Science, he worked while at university as the California Coordinator of the Student Environmental Action Coalition, Media Coordinator of the Free Burma Coalition and Student Body Vice President. After graduating, he became a journalist in West Africa and Southeast Asia before being employed by the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington DC. He has published essays in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor and many other US newspapers and magazines. This is his first book.